Steve Jones is the editor of SQLServerCentral.com and visits a wide variety of data related topics in his daily editorial. Steve has spent years working as a DBA and general purpose Windows administrator, primarily working with SQL Server since it was ported from Sybase in 1990. You can follow Steve on Twitter at twitter.com/way0utwest

It’s anti-SOPA/PIPA day, and a number of sites have shut down for the day. O’Reilly closed their page, and of course, Wikipedia shut down.

Google didn’t do the blackout I was hoping for, but they have hidden their logo:

I like the Wikipedia closure, which appeared seconds after hitting a page. It has a great effect on me.

I debated about shutting down this site, but for a WordPress hosted site, I didn’t see an easy way to do it.

To be clear

I am not against copyright legislation, nor IP protections. We should ensure that content creators have some recourse and ability to control the way their content is used.

I think SOPA / PIPA are gross, overreaching ways of doing this that are designed to help a few large companies, and potentially hurt many small ones, and will have no impact on foreign sites. These laws simple cut the US off; they do not affect the operation of the foreign site.

We can come up with better ways to protect content, while also preserving fair use and personal liberties, and limiting copyright.

My personal stance is that the original 14 years + 14 year extension for copyright is plenty. If you cannot earn money in those 28 years, let someone else build on your work.